The only thing that annoys me about Windows 8 is the fact that you are not able to change the window title bar color. It is almost impossible to read dark grey text on a black background.

My title bars aren't black, they're light grey, very readable. The default color scheme is "automatic" which tries to use a complementary color to your wallpaper. You can change it with the exact same interface: right-click on desktop, "personalize", click "colors" at the bottom

Just got my fifth boot-up bluescreen, another one in ntoskrnl.exe ... say what you like about win8's responsiveness, I've not found it more stable.

The only thing that annoys me about Windows 8 is the fact that you are not able to change the window title bar color. It is almost impossible to read dark grey text on a black background.

My title bars aren't black, they're light grey, very readable. The default color scheme is "automatic" which tries to use a complementary color to your wallpaper. You can change it with the exact same interface: right-click on desktop, "personalize", click "colors" at the bottom

Just got my fifth boot-up bluescreen, another one in ntoskrnl.exe ... say what you like about win8's responsiveness, I've not found it more stable.

Yeah Windows 8 is the trigger for me to start considering MacOS. I'm not there yet, but its not an outright denial anymore.

At the office we have two devs on Windows 7 (myself included) and 2 devs working on macbooks. We work on the same application using the same tools (Eclipse, Maven, other Java based dev tools). We do the same and yet... on MacOS everything just works a tiny bit better. Stuff loads a bit faster (in case of the OS: a whole lot faster), the application builds and packages a bit faster, dev applications boot a bit faster and take a bit less time to initialize to a point where you can start to use it, less resource usage, less conflicts, better tools built into the OS by default, neat backup system, ...

.. manufacturer, providing proper drivers that don't cause kernel-level problems which trigger the OS to go to a blue screen to prevent serious injury. The blue screen is there with a very good reason.

I got Windows 8 for 3 reasons: a) The much improved multi-monitor support b) The better performance all around c) The upgrade from Win7 Pro was dirty cheap.

The upgrade process was painless, had zero problems and I had my PC ready to use in the exact same state I left it in Win7. Minus the start menu of course. Before Win8, I would use the start menu only for the pinned application list and the type-to-search feature. I also had a few apps pinned to the taskbar and some more shortcuts on the desktop. Now, my desktop is clean, I only put files/documents on there, the taskbar only has Chrome and Firefox on it (for WinKey+<num> quick-launch feature) and the new start menu has become that thing I go to to launch any application.

I appreciate the way I can organize the tiles, which mirrors how I'm used to launching apps on my phone. It's clean, quick to use and looks pretty to be honest. Search is ok, except maybe that you need to click all the way to the right to go to Settings/Files then move again all the way to the left to actually click on what you searched for. I don't see myself using any metro app except for games, media and the kind of time-wasting apps you find on iOS/Android. Real work happens on the classic desktop and frankly it's just as good as Win7, you don't even see the start menu except the start of the day. Well, it's better actually because of the new multi-monitor taskbar, I love that.

It's only when you come to buy little bits of software like that, that you suddenly realise just how cheap OSes are for what they actually do. Interestingly this only leaves philosophical (or at an extreme stretch, ethical) reasons to choose Linux over "the other two". Those reasons aren't half getting more compelling.

Pros:* multi monitor support1. extended bottom menubar/taskbar(whatever the bottom bar is called)2. individual monitor snap(there is a 3-5 pixel wall at the top/bottom between monitors, that you can use to stop the mouse/snap/drag and such, that you could never do with windows 7 or earlier. Also never saw a plugin for something like this. * improved task manager Although resmon did offer a lot similiar in previous windows. (run command 'resmon' if you aren't familiar)* further improved stabilityless crashes! * quick boot times* prettier lockscreen * 'something new/interesting/fun to learn and explore/find new things'(e.g. Apparently there is an interactive lock screen alternative to typed password I have yet to see/know how to use yet)

con:* metro (I just don't like it, because its limited nature)( although I have it mostly disabled and metro start button disabled too) (switched to classic start)If you change a couple small settings, I haven't ever seen it intentionally or accidentally in weeks.

Although I rarely have had crashes in windows xp or 7, I have seen a consistent drop in BSOD and other crash/freezes with each iteration.

So far I don't think I have experienced any major bugs/freeze/crashes on windows 8 and I install/uninstall/delete a lot of stuff on a daily basis. (experimenting with misc software, etc...) I also am usually running wayy too many things. (I'm one of those 30-50 tabs open in browser type of person :/

But to be honest, aside from the metro and a few other minor things. I have noticed no significant changes pro or con. Generally since I no longer see/use metro stuff. I only see the pros. I know gaben/valve and even notch have mentioned some major negatives on the licensing/developing/signing side of things but I haven't ever personally encountered issues with that yet.

I have run a variety of software and server applications for development/testing that does tie in, as well as installed a variety of shell integration tools that have all worked flawlessly without any issues or errors.

Although I was just fine with windows 7, I see no major compelling reason to upgrade to windows 8 for most users. Though I would suggest avoid metro for most things.

Of course I could write a whole paper why it sucks, but what surprised me (well not really) is that there are still BSODs

Because I kinda heard... at least I think... that they were going to be removed

See how many times did you have a KERNEL PANIC in linux ? Never seen one.Its really bad when the OS can do nothing to save itself expect for rebooting the whole system.There should be algorithms to isolate the problem, try default cases/drivers/code, if it doesnt help kill only that process with a note to the user, and if for some reason everything crashes, do save everything - save all NON RELATED RAM to a file, like hibernation - loose nothing expect the processes that experienced problems.

I mean we as game programmers do the same - we dont ever want the game to completely crash, we build many default cases for that reason... on android you take it one step further if you like, and save everything to files, so that a user may never ever lose progress

The other OS's still have a lot of issues though, most people just don't see them a lot for a variety of reasons.In my experience, most mobile device people blame the app, not the OS, but on the laptops and desktops, this is often reversed,(People more likely to blame the OS and not the app) even though the app is the most likely culprit.

I have had my iPhone and Android phones freeze/crash/lose data on numerous occasions and never even give a single error code as to why its happened, It's even happened when no app was running, there is no easy way to track down the error, whereas the BSOD or whatever error/crash messages at least sometimes show some arbitrary vague error code driver hex ##.

Since there are no 'error codes' its harder to really post/find things about it online, thus people just accept the fact its crashed and restart the device.

Including games/apps on mobile, go to any decently sized app's forum and there will be plenty of posts of people losing 100% of their data, and of course unexplained crashes.

The only thing that annoys me about Windows 8 is the fact that you are not able to change the window title bar color. It is almost impossible to read dark grey text on a black background.

My title bars aren't black, they're light grey, very readable. The default color scheme is "automatic" which tries to use a complementary color to your wallpaper. You can change it with the exact same interface: right-click on desktop, "personalize", click "colors" at the bottom

I've been using Windows 7 long enough to know that. No, I changed my window color to black since that looks really good with my current wallpaper. The title bar looks a little bit like this:

I have one question for those you have Win8. Can I switch off the "start screen" so it will always go to the desktop? I hate the touch driven UI so much Also there are no side bar widgets anymore?

I still wonder

You can install a 3rd party app (both free and paid available) that will present the standard windows xp/windows 7 'start' without ever launching the 'start screen' so in essence, yes it can be switched off, not by turning it off, but by never turning it on.

It's actually quite unimpressive: It was the app that was the impetus for Metro, but it's not a Metro app. Basically it's just the good old XP media center app ported and updated slightly. Still, the XP media center was a good app, and it's still not too bad a UI if you use a TV and a RF remote.

Originally, I was going for Arch Linux, but I wanted to be able to get back to writing code quickly.Just wondering, who here (if anyone) is a user of Arch?

Oh eh... I'm a little late here

But yes, I am a user of Arch linux, and I probably wouldn't have choosen it the next time. I don't like unitiy that much, that's why I wouldn't choose ubuntu... and yeah I know there is kubuntu, I've used it several years.

And the only thing I hate about linux is X11. I'm glad there is an alternative coming (forgot the name... edit will be made...)

And eh... hey guys Linux-Windows-fusion user since I'm 8 or 9... Started with SUSE when I was 6 or so...

And the only thing I hate about linux is X11. I'm glad there is an alternative coming (forgot the name... edit will be made...)

Wayland. And what specifically do you hate about X? X is the Ship of Theseus: just about everything it does has been replaced by some extension or another already. Might be past time to put them in core and just call it X12, but it seems to more than do the job already as it is.

And the only thing I hate about linux is X11. I'm glad there is an alternative coming (forgot the name... edit will be made...)

Wayland. And what specifically do you hate about X? X is the Ship of Theseus: just about everything it does has been replaced by some extension or another already. Might be past time to put them in core and just call it X12, but it seems to more than do the job already as it is.

Ah yes. Wayland was the name. At first I googled 'Waveland', but obviously this was not right.

X11 is really outdated today. Wayland is going to be faster. The biggest problem from X11 is performance. They need to communicate between X-Server and X-Client, which is a performance hit, and then using uncompressed packages makes it even slower (where 'even slower' is not too slow, but ... slower...)

I'll believe the claims that Wayland will be faster when I actually see that it's faster. As for the client/server split, that's something that other window environments have actually moved toward implementing, not away from. Right now it communicates through shared memory, so the only overhead is the context switching. You're also quite wrong about the protocol being uncompressed, though it doesn't bother with it on local communication channels for obvious reasons.

X has a really crufty API, it has ancient internal notions about displays and visuals and fonts that are inadequate and rely on extensions to fix. But fix it they do, and even if it's inelegant, this is nothing that users care about. The roadside is littered with the corpses of projects that have tried to replace X without even bothering to offer any value proposition above and beyond what X already has.

Back to Win8, I seem to have solved my problems of a black screen on bootup: turns out the OEM forgot to disable the onboard graphics, and Windows occasionally just can't cope with that. I guess any replacement for X will also just have to write display detection from scratch too, hope it's more reliable than the one in Windows...

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